According to novelist Ewan Morrison, the outlook for self-published authors is growing bleaker by the day. We’re heading towards a bubble, he claims, which will mimic other market collapses in the history of our fickle economy.

Like the dotcom bubble, the commercial real estate bubble, the subprime mortgage bubble, the credit bubble and the derivative trading bubble before it, the DIY epublishing bubble is inflating around us. Each of those other bubbles also saw, in their earliest stages, a great deal of fuss made over a “new” phenomenon, which was then over-hyped and over-leveraged. But speculation, as we’ve learned at our peril, is a very dangerous foundation for any business. And when the epub bubble bursts, as all previous bubbles have done, the fall-out for publishing and writing may be even harder to repair than it is proving to be in the fields of mortgages, derivatives and personal debt. Because this bubble is based on cultural, not purely economic, grounds.

I won’t pretend to be an expert in economics, but I can assure budding writers that there is no need to panic. Morrison’s attempt at labeling self-publishing services as some form of Ponzi scheme is silly. When you upload your novel or nonfiction book to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, you’re not investing any money - just time and energy. No returns are guaranteed, and the only thing writers risk losing is some confidence thanks to grouchy reviewers.

While Morrison’s bubble theory is flawed, his post does bring up some valid warnings for those thinking about joining the self-publishing movement. Here are the two most important things you need to know:

1. You are not going to become a millionaire from self-publishing ebooks. Don’t expect to even earn a decent living from them. Anyone who tells you that you can substitute writing ebooks for a full-time job is trying to deceive you. There are only a handful of true self-publishing success stories. Find a stable job and make writing your hobby, or else devote yourself to the craft of freelance writing and start finding some real clients.

2. You should not be paying anyone to publish your ebooks. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are running legitimate services, but there are plenty of swindlers out there trying to game the system. If you need help publishing your book, contact a tech-savvy friend or use the endless resources online before opening your wallet. During the publishing process, the only things you should even consider paying for are cover design and advertising space. Self-publishing is great because it lets you maintain control over your own work. Don’t give up that power because you’re too lazy or too scared to see your project through to the end.

Three of the largest U.S. book publishers are scheduled to launch a new social reading website this September. It’s going to be called Bookish, and right now the purpose for the site is as hazy as its name suggests.

The people behind Bookish claim the site will do a number of things: provide reading recommendations, act as a digital book club, provoke discovery of new books, conduct interviews of popular authors and editors, break news about the publishing industry, and even sell e-books directly to consumers.

It sounds like a lot for a single service to handle, but the fact that Bookish is being supported by some of the big publishers makes its ambitious plan a bit more realistic.

And I’m glad that Bookish is aiming high, because the social reading services available right now are not anything special. I’ve been using Amazon’s Kindle website since I first switched to e-books, but it remains rather unimpressive even after a major overhaul a few months ago. The sharing features are limited, and it just feels like the service could be doing a lot more with all the information it has about my reading habits. For instance - tell me how fast I read, show me charts of when I get the most reading done, and pull a Foursquare and give me badges when I finish a certain number of books. This type of gamification might not be embraced by traditional readers, but chances are those people don’t own a Kindle in the first place.

It’s not clear whether Bookish will be able to do the things I just mentioned since it probably won’t be associated with a specific e-reader. However, I like the overall goal of building a digital reading hub – sort of an IMDB for books. Reading might be a solitary activity, but oddly enough, that doesn’t mean it can’t be social too.